Research methods

After you have defined your research worthy problem and completed a preliminary reading of the existing literature about the problem, you need to gather more information and probably also empirical data to write your thesis.  Depending on the problem you have defined, you will either have to conduct a thorough literature review or carry out field based research – or maybe a combination of both.

In any case, you have to begin to formulate an approach to collecting your own data to better understand the problem. This approach to data collection is known as a research method, and research methods can be employed across a variety of study types.